javax/media/j3d required though not used?

I am brand new to VisAD, and having trouble running the first
example in Ugo Taddei's tutorial. I get this exception:
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/media/j3d/Behavior
After reading the mailing list archive, I see that the
recommended solution is to get a copy of Java 3D from sun.
I am using java 1.4 on linux, and it appears that this
library is not part of the standard distribution.
However, all of my users will be obliged to do the same. This
presents a pretty big obstacle to my using VisAD. I was
just beginning to imagine all of the great things we could
do with VisAD....
Is it possible to use VisAD -without- Java 3D, as long as
I am content with only 2D graphics?
Thank you.
- Paul Shannon